20120906

'Act of Desperation'

A BBC article today, called China suicide blast man's 'act of desperation', reported how a wheelchair user blew himself up in a government office in Shandong using home-made explosives, injuring six government workers. According to his brother, the 49-year-old man had been paralysed following an accident at a building site almost 20 years ago. He couldn't make ends meet and had petitioned officials for years, seeking more compensation than he had already received.

The following are some remarks made in the article:

The case is a graphic illustration of the social tensions that have been felt across China.

There has been a growing number of attacks on local officials in recent years.

There are thousands of protests every month.

Many people are angry about official corruption and abuses of power.

Ironically and worryingly, these statements have become perfectly applicable to the situation of Hong Kong today, although they are amplified in different forms here. Social tensions, protests and attacks on local officials (as yet strictly confined to verbal attacks in the case of Hong Kong) have become the order of the day, and these are caused by many people's deep-seated anger about official corruption and abuses of power.

The evidence for the contamination of Hong Kong's way of living following the tighter and tigher grip and starker and starker intervention of China couldn't be more obvious.